SN Brussels engineers find dead body in A330 wheel well after flight from Dakar, second this weekend after Friday identical Delta 767 incident

SN Brussels engineers find dead body in A330 wheel well after flight from Dakar, second this weekend after Friday identical Delta 767 incident

15 January, 2007

SOURCE: FlightGlobal.com

BY: Justin Wastnage

London

A second dead body had been found on in the wheel well of aircraft originating from West Africa over the weekend.

Belgian carrier SN Brussels has confirmed that a deceased human body has been found inside the main gear wheel well Number 1 (left) of an Airbus A330-300 operating flight SN 204 from Banjul, The Gambia via Dakar, Senegal that landed at Brussels airport this morning. SN Brussels Airlines, which is soon to complete its merger with Virgin Express to become Brussels Airlines, says it is cooperating fully with the Belgian investigation authorities.

The incident comes two days after Delta Air Lines also found a dead stowaway in the right main wheel well of a Boeing 767 at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta international airport on Friday. Flight DL 035 had also originated in Dakar.

The man was described by Georgia Bureau of Investigation as a young black male in his twenties. The probable cause of death was asphyxia caused by having been squeezed by the landing gear shortly after take-off, the bureau concludes in an initial statement. The man had no identification documents and carried only a small back-pack with a change of clothes, the airport's customs and border protection office says.

There is no further information on the Brussels incident.

Incidents of illegal stowaways are rare and usually fatal. In June 2005, body parts fell onto a home near New York JFK airport as gears extended for landing. The man had died soon after take-off from Dakar on a South African Airways flight originating in Johannesburg.